June 29, 2023
“Life is not the way it is supposed to be. It is the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference.”
– Virginia Satir
The separation that death brings affects us in countless big ways … and in countless little ways, which can be especially painful. Instead of two people sitting on the sofa watching Netflix at night, there’s only one. The names on your checks will change. And when one person of a couple passes away, there’s a deep sense of loss that permeates everything.
Socially, you may have been known as Mary and Dustin because that’s what the invitations and the Christmas cards always said. When you went out with other couples, you weren’t two separate individuals, you were a union, but that union, as far as society is concerned, has ended.
Lois and Dan had been married decades when he died suddenly of a heart attack. They had dozens of friends who socialized together, who shared their early parenting misadventures, who got competitive when it came time for their kids to choose colleges, and who reminisced when they went to their kids’ weddings.
Even though Lois’ friends were always sympathetic after she lost her husband, somehow the dynamic changed. Amid all those couples, she was a single woman, a widow. Instead of being the better half of a couple, she was lonely, and while her friends never treated her as such, she felt like an outcast. Much of this was her own uncomfortableness.
Her friends loved her dearly and always included her, but her separation led to a feeling of awkwardness, like being the proverbial fifth wheel. Her friends pleaded with her not to think like that. She should have listened to them.
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You will feel out of place in social settings without the one you love beside you.
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